‘Let’s talk to him, at least,’ said Nerigold, holding Lucien up to me so she could clamber to her feet.
I had to put my bow aside to take the baby, but something told me I wouldn’t need it. This stranger was curious but he meant us no harm. He was only thirty paces from us now. His britches were well made and his boots of the best brown leather.
‘He’s not from around here, I’m sure of it,’ I whispered. ‘We’ll tell him we’re collecting mushrooms,’ then remembered too late that we didn’t have a single one to show him.
He called to us, a cheery greeting. He was older than Tamlyn, though not yet thirty, I guessed. His fine clothes were rumpled and smeared with dirt and the oily sap of the undergrowth he’d been pushing through, for some time, by the look of it. I was desperately trying to recall the name of the village we’d passed — Dona-something — when the stranger stopped dead and simply stared.
‘You’re here,’ he said, addressing this odd greeting to Nerigold alone.
My eyes shot straight to her. Did she know this man? I didn’t have to scan her face for long; she was as surprised by his words as I was.
‘Do I know you?’ she asked.
‘Oh, er, no, not at all,’ he stammered. ‘It’s just that I … I’ve been at the diggings for a long time now and we don’t see many women. None as pretty as you, anyway,’ he added with a smile I didn’t like the look of.
At the last minute his arms spread wide to include me, but I wasn’t fooled. There was something about this man that sent a spider of distrust skittering across my skin. His eyes danced in their sockets like nervous horses penned too long in their stalls. He’d said he was from the diggings, but his clothes were so fine and a glance at his uncallused hands showed that he didn’t wield a pick or shovel, either.
‘Are you in charge of the diggings?’ I asked.
‘In charge?’ he repeated without looking towards me. ‘Not quite, no. I’m one of Arnou Dessar’s assistants.’
‘Arnou Dessar?’
‘The scholar from Vonne who’s come to study the ancient buildings, the carvings in the rock … and the mosaics.’
Ancient buildings, carvings. We were learning more each time he opened his mouth, but before I could ask another question, he stunned us with one of his own.
‘The baby is yours, isn’t it?’
Lucien was nestled in my arms but the man was looking straight at Nerigold again.
There was no point in denying it. Nerigold nodded and took Lucien from me. The effect this had on the man was even more astonishing. He sucked in a quick breath and took a half-step backwards, as though mother and child had suddenly begun to glow with a fierce light. I saw a chance to find out more while he was so distracted. ‘How many are working at the diggings?’ I asked.
He had to shake his head to clear it before he could reply. ‘A dozen men we’ve hired from the mines hereabouts and an old crone to do the cooking. Then there’s Arnou Dessar and another assistant like me.’
I wasn’t really interested in the number so much, but whether any were Wyrdborn. His list of workers sounded innocent enough. Although I was still wary of him, he’d spoken too freely to be lying.
‘Could we visit the diggings?’ I asked.
‘Certainly. Master Dessar would be fascinated.’
Fascinated? Why such a word when he could simply have said we’d be welcome? I was beginning to think this stranger was mad, and that impression became stronger when he turned and began to thrash his way towards the track without waiting for us to follow.
‘Aren’t you going to show us the way?’ I called.
He spun round, but if he was aware of how rude he must seem, he didn’t care. ‘Stay on the path for another half-mile and you’ll see the diggings at the base of that ridge.’ And he was gone.
‘The least he could do was wait for us,’ said Nerigold curtly. ‘And did you see the way he stared at me?’
There was something that troubled me more than the staring, however. How could he have been so certain that Lucien was Nerigold’s son?
‘You’re sure you’ve never seen him before?’ I asked.
‘Not that I remember, but there’s a lot about my time in Vonne that’s just a swirling cloud inside my head.’
‘Maybe he’s gone off to tell the cook there’ll be more to feed,’ I said lightly, but as much as my rumbling stomach hoped this was true, I didn’t believe it. ‘He didn’t even tell us his name,’ I growled.
We followed his steps through the undergrowth to the path and set out after him, until we found Tamlyn and Ryall climbing towards us.
‘There was a man on the path,’ said Tamlyn immediately.
‘In a fine blue shirt?’
‘Yes. We managed to duck behind a tree before he saw us, but he was in such a hurry I doubt he’d have noticed if we’d waved to him as he passed.’
‘We weren’t so lucky. He was searching for something in the bush and saw us before we could hide. He’s from the diggings. Said we could visit them, that we’d be welcome even.’ I didn’t mention his fascination with Nerigold. ‘Does it look safe?’
Tamlyn nodded. ‘There are no Wyrdborn, I’m sure of that much. No guards, either. Just as well, because they’ll be expecting you now. It will look odd if you don’t visit the diggings.’
Just as the nameless stranger had promised, we soon saw figures through the trees, most of them digging steadily or pushing small carts of rubble. We stopped at the last of the trees for a better look before the workers could see us as well.
The diggings were larger than I’d imagined, stretching out before us another two hundred yards, maybe more, before the flattened earth reached the sheer granite walls of the ridge that curved behind it like the cupped hand of a giant.
‘What are all those piles of dirt for?’ Nerigold asked.
None of us could explain the circle of waist-high mounds marking the outer edge of the site. There was a cave opening its gaping black mouth in the rock and, as we watched, a miner trudged out from the darkness, raising a grimy hand to shade his eyes from the sunlight. A shovel hung from his other hand as he made his way towards a cabin not far from the entrance. Attached to the side of this cabin was a lean-to which gave shelter to the single figure stooped over a table beneath it.
‘Stay close,’ Tamlyn told us with a final glance over his shoulder before he led the way into the open.
The first workers to spot us stopped digging to watch our approach. They were clearing away loose gravel from a wall that protruded only two feet above the surface. That explained the many piles we’d seen. Everything here must have been buried under the dirt until these workers had dug it free.
As we got closer, I could see that the wall was made of stones neatly trimmed to lock together without mortar. All around were similar stones, loose and scattered, dozens of them, uncovered by the digging. Ancient buildings, the nameless stranger had told us. So ancient that they’d long since crumbled and fallen in the face of wind and rain, with no one to repair the damage. Where were the people who’d built them, I wondered.
That question might have intrigued me all the way to the cabin if I hadn’t looked again at the men resting on their shovels as we passed.
‘It’s happening again,’ Nerigold whispered. ‘The staring. You’d think we were ghosts.’
‘Not all of us,’ I said. ‘Just you.’
I took her arm and urged her on. The miners dropped their tools without a thought for how they landed in the dust and, climbing over the low wall, began to follow us.
‘Tamlyn,’ I called.
He saw the men trailing twenty paces behind us and shot me a worried glance. It was too late to tell him what had happened when the blue-shirted stranger had first seen Nerigold’s face. Besides, he was about to see it for himself.
As we passed a second gang of men stacking stout timbers like those used in mines to keep the rock from collapsing, they too stopped to watch us, staring astonished at Nerigold. By the
time we reached the cabin near the cave’s entrance, every man we’d passed had joined in the procession. The sole figure beneath the lean-to’s canopy looked annoyed at this.
‘Why have you stopped work?’ he called to the men.
He was older than the rest, grey-bearded, his hair the same most likely, if there’d been enough of it to tell. He wore fine boots like the stranger we’d met earlier, although he took less care with his shirt and dusty pants. Despite his show of anger, I liked his grandfatherly face, perhaps because it hinted at the same impish kindness that I’d loved in my own grandfather. That changed quickly, though, when his wrinkled face froze into the same unwavering stare.
Tamlyn was watching, his magical strength ready to protect us. He could sweep them all aside with a brush of his arm if they attacked.
I put my hand on that unnaturally powerful arm. ‘It’s all right. They won’t hurt us.’
‘So why are they staring at Nerigold as though she’s flown down from the clouds?’
I still had no answer; and where was the man in the blue shirt? If he’d come scurrying back here to tell his companions about us, why did they look so surprised?
At last the older man came to his senses. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, still sounding dazed. ‘My name is Arnou Dessar, scholar and adviser to the king.’ He gave a little bow out of courtesy but it was plain he didn’t take himself too seriously. ‘You must have come a long way to join us here. Would you care for some water and perhaps a bowl of soup?’ He called to someone without looking around. ‘Gabbet, fetch some beakers, would you?’
An awkward silence followed until he realised that no one had moved.
‘Gabbet, where are you?’ he said.
‘He hasn’t come back yet, Master Dessar. You sent him to look for small caves hidden in the hillsides, remember?’ The speaker was dressed in much the same style as the man we’d seen earlier. The other assistant, I guessed.
Arnou Dessar pondered this for a moment. ‘So I did. Well then, you get our guests some water, would you, Norling?’
It was time we offered our own names. Tamlyn began, once again calling himself Piet, then introducing Ryall and me and Lucien, who slept in the harness with his face slouched against my shoulder.
Arnou Dessar let his eyes play over us just long enough to be polite. But there was one name he was clearly impatient to know and his manners finally deserted him. ‘And this other young woman?’
‘Is Nerigold,’ said Tamlyn.
‘Nerigold,’ the scholar repeated, drawing out the sounds as though they made the finest poetry.
It was too much for Nerigold. ‘Why are you staring at me this way, every one of you?’
As soon as she said this, they forced their eyes to the ground, to the sky, towards one another. But, just as quickly, those eyes crept back to my friend’s face.
‘I’ve never been to Nan Tocha before,’ she told them hotly. ‘You’ve never seen me —’
Arnou Dessar spoke over her rising voice. ‘No, but we all feel that we have.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ I snapped.
Tamlyn had moved to Nerigold’s side. ‘What are you talking about? You’ve either seen her before or you haven’t.’
‘Perhaps it’s better if I show you,’ said the scholar.
After the assistant, Norling, had brought us water, Arnou Dessar called to the miners who still shuffled restlessly in a loose circle around us, ‘Four of you, bring torches.’ Then he marched away towards the cave.
At the entrance, Tamlyn hesitated. ‘You have men waiting for us in the darkness.’
‘And women, too,’ said Arnou Dessar, with a teasing smile. ‘But none that can harm you, despite the mighty weapons they hold in their hands.’
Tamlyn looked at me, a silent question in his eyes. Could we trust this man? He wasn’t a skilled judge of such matters; the Wyrdborn simply killed those they couldn’t be sure of.
I didn’t sense any malice in this ageing scholar. Whatever game he was playing, his smile was as sincere as that man Gabbet’s had been false. I nodded to Tamlyn and took three steps into the darkness, making the others follow. Arnou Dessar was quickly at my side to lead the way. The light of his torch made Lucien grimace in his sleep and, seeing this, he shifted the flame to his other hand.
‘You have a fine son, Silvermay,’ he said kindly.
I should have corrected his mistake I suppose, but felt a strange pride in being taken for Lucien’s mother and replied with a simple, ‘Thank you.’
‘How much do you know of what we’re doing here?’ he asked when Tamlyn joined us.
‘Very little,’ Tamlyn confessed. ‘We were told to come here by … by a friend. She hoped there might be some clue to a mystery we’re trying to solve.’
‘A clue, yes, your friend is right about that, but as for the mystery … well, that’s why I’m here also, by order of the king.’
We had walked twenty paces into the cave by this time. Arnou Dessar fell silent and skirted the left-hand wall, holding his torch close to the rock, his movements so deliberate that I sensed he wanted us to watch carefully.
What was that on the wall? They looked like thin, dark lines traced over the rock. Were they made with the point of a burnt stick?
Tamlyn went nearer, until he could touch them. ‘They’re grooves cut into the rock,’ he said, surprised.
I saw it now. Arnou Dessar was holding his torch against the wall so its light was thrown onto the grooves at a sharp angle, creating shadow lines. The longer I looked, the more I saw they were not simply gouged into the surface at random.
‘Stand away a little distance,’ the scholar said.
We backed away and with every step our wonder grew. It was the outline of a man, drawn as expertly as any I’d seen on paper, except this had been chiselled into solid rock. The figure was tensed for battle, a sword in his hand. The artist had even captured the grimace of a warrior seized by rage and fear in the moments before the fighting begins. He was no more than lines cut into stone but he could still force a gasp of terror from my throat.
‘What is this place?’ I asked. ‘Why have you come here to dig now, when those ruins outside must have been here for years?’
‘We have no name for it yet,’ Arnou Dessar replied. ‘But your second question is easier to answer. No one knew a city had once existed in Nan Tocha. There are no books that speak of it, no maps. The only mention comes in ancient tales of gods and monsters, no more than myths told by storytellers to amuse us all around a warm fire at night.’
‘Those walls looked real enough to me. The tribes who mine for silver and tin here must have seen it. And this warrior, too,’ I said.
‘Not if it was all hidden beneath the ground,’ Arnou Dessar said. ‘Everything you see outside has been freed from the soil that swallowed it up. A landslide, perhaps. That’s one of the things we are trying to work out. But what we’re more sure of is that this was a sizable town, with great halls and temples, and it’s been hidden since before anyone began mining Nan Tocha for silver or tin. Even the opening to this cave was choked off.’
‘Who would build such a place and then abandon it?’ I asked.
‘I have no answer for that, either. Not yet. No ordinary people could have built stone walls like those you saw outside. And these exquisite figures …’ We had moved deeper into the cave as he explained and with each step we saw more of them. ‘There is magic in their design and the smooth bore of the grooves. This cave has yielded some secrets, no matter how grudging it is to give them up.’
‘You have some idea who lived here, though, don’t you,’ Tamlyn prompted him cautiously.
‘My ideas keep changing,’ Arnou Dessar said, mocking himself. ‘It looked to me like the early Wyrdborn lived here, at first. Why and what made them leave is the mystery King Chatiny sent me here to solve. Now I’m not sure the Wyrdborn had anything to do with this place at all.’
With the one word I dreaded still echoing along the shadow-
daubed walls of the cave, Arnou Dessar came to a halt at last. His torch showed a small opening to the right. Instead of the irregular lines of a natural cave, this was shaped by the hand of man into a doorway.
‘Let my men go first with their torches,’ he said.
He seemed as eager to enter the space, and the last man had barely squeezed through before he followed, inviting us to do the same.
Ryall went first, then Tamlyn and Nerigold, leaving me in sudden darkness, except for the doorway outlined by the light from within. At last I entered a room the size of my home in Haywode. It had been hewn out of the rock just as the passageway had been, forming perfectly smooth walls and a domed ceiling. Arnou Dessar’s men held their torches high so that the light fell brightest onto the far wall.
What greeted us was more than a drawing grooved into the rock. This was something I had never seen before. The figure that stared back at us was created from tiny pieces of glass and stone, thousands of them in more colours than I could count. Each had been placed on the wall carefully to create a picture of a woman in far more detail than a craftsman could achieve with hammer and chisel. The colours of the stone helped me pick out her pale cheeks, her lips, even her blue eyes. A plaited rope of dark brown hair curved forward over her shoulder and fell to disappear behind the bundle she held in her arms. I took this much in, but only just, for my eyes didn’t want to leave the woman’s face.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I whispered.
Where was Nerigold? I moved to her side and reached my arm around her shoulders, tugging her to me gently. Since Lucien lay asleep in his harness on my back, this embrace meant she was able to wrap her arms around him, too. Nerigold needed the touch of those she loved at that moment, because the face on the wall was hers.
14
A Tale Told in Coloured Stones
‘How can there be a picture of me in this cave?’ said Nerigold.
She’d been angry when everyone stared at her so shamelessly, yet now her own eyes locked onto the image before her and wouldn’t let go.
Silvermay Page 12
